Self-coercion and productivity systems

 I was listening to Cal Newport's most recent podcast episode and he made an interesting point. Some people use schedules and other productivity tools to constrain their future self; other people use schedules to help their future selves.

It's a subtle difference but I think it matters. For example, right now it's Friday afternoon, and I've just scheduled what I'm going to do on the Tuesday after the long weekend.

  1. If I think I'm going to be lazy on Tuesday, but actually I don't want to be lazy on Tuesday, there are a few things I can do. I can list all the tasks I want Tuesday-me to do. I can even tell someone about my plans, or set financial penalties. There's plenty of this kind of motivational advice on the internet, and it can be very helpful, but it's not the only way to use productivity tools.
  2. If I trust myself on Tuesday, and want to optimize for achieving Tuesday-me's goals rather than Friday-me's goals, some of the actions I take might be similar. For example, I might predict that Tuesday-me won't want to spend lots of time trying to think of what to do next and would rather have a schedule. Friday-me can make a schedule to help Tuesday-me, knowing that she might not stick to it but will probably find it pretty useful.

Cal thinks of his productivity systems as the second type. He trusts his future self, he just wants to reduce his future self's workload. I had never really thought through the difference, but now that I'm thinking about it, I can probably do more to help Tuesday-me achieve my goals.

  • Tuesday-me will be coming back from a long weekend and hopefully will have totally disconnected from work. I could write Tuesday-me a note about what the main things going on at work are, so I don't need to remember it during the weekend, and even book her half an hour on Tuesday morning to catch up on what's happening.
  • Tuesday-me will probably be refreshed and pretty excited about digging into a new piece of work. I should try to protect her from too many meetings and instead set aside some time for her to do some really focused deep work. Wednesday and Thursday me are more often excited about meetings.
  • Tuesday-me will want something interesting to share at our team meeting (ego is important to us). I can either plan that out now, or make a plan for her to work on something interesting Tuesday morning so that she has something interesting to say at the team meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

I am going to try going forward to think of my future self as the person whose goals I want to further, rather than my present self, and see what kind of difference that makes in my workday.

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